Park work, track annexation OK'd

The Columbus City Council has approved spending more than $3?million to add to the Alum Creek bike trail, renovate the McDonald recreation center and fix the Goodale Park pond.

Doug Caruso, The Columbus Dispatch

The Columbus City Council has approved spending more than $3?million to add to the Alum Creek bike trail, renovate the McDonald recreation center and fix the Goodale Park pond.

Council members also signed off last night on the final step to annex the 208-acre Scioto Downs horse-racing complex on the South Side, where a $150 million expansion will add slot machines and as many as 500 jobs.

The track will have a total of about 700 jobs when the expansion is complete, said Sean Mentel, the attorney for MTR Gaming, the owner of the racetrack. MTR applied to annex to the city last year, saying it needs city sewer and water services to support the expansion.

It is one of the three largest recent annexations by the city. The others are the Hollywood Casino and the former Cooper Stadium on the West Side. Cooper Stadium is to be redeveloped as a half-mile auto-racing track.

Also last night, the council approved zoning for a 60-unit senior-housing complex on Wheatland Avenue on the Hilltop, despite objections from several neighborhood residents. The vote was 5-1, with Councilwoman Michelle M. Mills voting against the project and Councilman Hearcel F. Craig abstaining.

The site is too close to a fire station and a future bomb-squad training area, said Dan Downing, a member of Friends of the Hilltop. He and two other speakers also were concerned that the project could change from housing for people 55 and older to general housing for people with low incomes.

The Hilltop Area Commission had approved the project 9-2. It is for people 55 and older who have incomes below $28,380, said Thomas Simons, senior vice president of the Woda Group, which is developing the complex.

Councilman A. Troy Miller, who leads the council’s zoning committee, said he would like to hear objections to zoning proposals sooner than the night when council is to vote on them. Mills said she voted no because she wanted more time to consider the matter.

The city’s Recreation and Parks Department received the go-ahead last night on three projects that residents will see this summer:

• The city will spend $150,000 to repair the Goodale Park pond, which has been leaking since last fall when the city tried to refill it after a new fountain topped by two bronze elephants was installed. In October, firefighters pumped 4 million gallons of water into the pond, only to see it leak out.

• A 1.1-mile stretch of trail following Alum Creek, from Mock Road Park south to Bethesda Avenue, will cost about $1.75 million. This is the second-to-last section of the trail, and construction will begin this spring, said Alan McKnight, the city’s recreation and parks director. The final phase of the trail between Three Creeks Metro Park and Westerville should come in 2013, he said.

• It will cost $1.4 million to renovate the McDonald Athletic Complex at 4900 Olentangy River Rd. on the Northwest Side. Work will include a new ventilation system, exterior work and a new gym floor. The McDonald gym was one of six city gyms where elevated levels of mercury vapor were detected last summer. Two of them — at the Far East and Marion-Franklin recreation centers — were deemed unsafe and are already being replaced. The other gym floors are slated for replacement over the next three to four years, McKnight said.